A large, healthy blueberry plant produces thousands of flower buds every year. With up to 16 individual flowers developing from each bud and every flower a potential berry, pollination needs in blueberries are great. In order to set fruit, pollen that is produced by the flower’s anthers must reach the stigma so it can fertilize […]
Aromatic, pungent and spicy, ginger is the underground rhizome of the plant known botanically as zingiber officinale. The plant’s botanical name is thought to be derived from its sanskrit name singabera which means “horn shaped,” reflecting how ginger root appears. It has a firm texture and is covered with a tough brownish skin Ayurveda […]
Carefully crafted by young worker bees into six-sided honeycomb cells, beeswax provides tiny storage units for bee larvae, honey and pollen. There are two possible explanations for why honeycomb is composed of hexagons rather than another shape. One is that a hexagonal structure uses the least material to create a lattice of cells. Another is that […]
From time to time, beekeepers will need to replace old queens or provide a queen to a hive that has, for one reason or another, lost their queen. One method of making new queens is by the Doolittle Method (named for G.M. Doolittle). This is done by grafting the appropriate aged larvae into homemade wax cups. This […]